ZMOT

Mark your calendars. Set your clocks! Doomsday April 21, 2015. Are you ready for ZMOT?

It’s time to take a gander at what Google Analytics says about the overall mobile traffic to your Website. Check the stats under Audience > Mobile > Overview and look at the breakdown of desktop/mobile/tablet. Google has been paying close attention to these stats since 2011. On April 21, 2015 the next Google algorithm update may cause a seismic shift in their search engine results pages (SERPs).

This moment-of-truth has been coming by degrees for quite some time. In November 2014, Google added a “mobile-friendly” label to the SERP listings for qualifying sites. Google explains, “A page is eligible for the ‘Mobile-friendly’ label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

Content automatically resizes to fit the screen (so you don’t have to scroll horizontally)

Large links with plenty of space between each so they are easily tapped

On February 26, 2015 Google dropped the other shoe: “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”

One of the easiest ways to see if your Website will suffer a ranking loss after the algorithm update is to check it at Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test site. At DesignWise Studios, all of the sites we design are mobile-friendly…

I have been an educational design consultant for more than a decade, initially working for Marquette University designing their first distance learning applications for the Colleges of Nursing and of Education. I continue to explore and research the ongoing development of new media and the interactive learning interface it provides. I am a filmmaker and social media campaign developer.